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A wildlife park has welcomed its newest arrival – complete with a rare gene that’s sure to make it one of the park’s biggest attractions.A Victorian wildlife park has been blessed with a rare new attraction after one of the park’s wombats gave birth to a striking golden joey. The golden wombat is the result of a rare gene in southern hairy-nosed wombats. The new golden wombat, named “Honey Bun”, was born at Ballarat Wildlife Park to mum Nulai and dad Willy. The light-coloured wombats aren’t commonly found in the wild and it’s thought their lighter colour could make them...

An international team of scientists have been able to replicate how a wombat produces square poo—and it could change the way geometric products are manufactured in future. Research published today in the Royal Society of Chemistry's journal Soft Matter, expands on the discovery that wombat poo forms its distinctive shape within the wombat's intestines, not at the point of exit as previously thought. They have now discovered that the slow passage of the feces and differing stiffness within the last 17 percent of the intestines produces the square shape—before exiting via its round anus. This discovery is not only applicable...

Wombats, short-legged, burrowing marsupials native to Australia, are the only animals known to produce cube-shaped feces. It’s long been speculated that wombats produce these poop bricks as a unique way of marking their territory. Now, scientists have determined the likely causes of these unusual feces are the shape and flexibility of the wombats’ intestines, National Geographic reports. Researchers inflated long balloons in the intestines of dead common wombats to measure the shape and flexibility and found two ravinelike grooves where the intestines were more elastic. These grooves could form the poop into a solid cube just before it exits the wombat, the scientists reported over the weekend at...

Australian's best-known wombat, George, has left the home he's known since he was rescued from his mother's pouch after she was killed on the NSW Central Coast in 2016. George has been living at the Australian Reptile Park but on Friday was transferred to his new digs at Ceder Creek Wombat Sanctuary. "We are sad to see George go and miss him already," reptile park general manager Tim Faulkner said.

A YOUNG driver who lost control of her car after hitting a wombat in Gippsland died at the scene of the crash last night, while two others were taken to hospital with serious injuries. After losing control of her four door hatch, the driver in her 20s collided with an oncoming ute. The driver was heading north along Inverloch-Korumburra Road in Wattle Bank, 130km east of Melbourne shortly before 8pm. Occupants of the ute believed to be a man and a woman in their 30s suffered serious injuries following the collision and are now in hospital. Police are now investigating....

Australian scientists yesterday unveiled the biggest-ever graveyard of an ancient rhino-sized mega-wombat called diprotodon, with the site potentially holding valuable clues on the species’ extinction. The remote fossil deposit in outback Queensland state is thought to contain up to 50 diprotodon skeletons including a huge specimen named Kenny, whose jawbone alone is 70cm long. Lead scientist on the dig, Scott Hocknull from the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, said Kenny was one of the largest diprotodons he had ever seen and one of the best preserved specimens. Pigeon-toed and with a backward-facing pouch large enough to carry an adult human, Hocknull...

The Southern hairy-nosed wombat was found close to death, dehydrated and exhausted, by shearers working on a remote property. He was named Polar by the wildlife volunteer who nursed him back to health. "I've been looking after wombats for nearly 40 years, and he's the third white one that's come into my care. And, yes, he's very rare," said wildlife rescuer, Val Salmon. Ms Salmon also looks after another wombat and a baby kangaroo.

Anyone want to buy a wombat? Every few months, one pundit or another publishes an essay trying to explain why conservatives don't believe in global warming. Generally, their explanations are well off the mark. But conservative skepticism about global warming is really not all that hard to understand: It's simply sales resistance. No matter what new miracle product the left is selling, conservatives have heard the pitch before, and they're not buying. Instead, they're asking themselves some basic questions: # Does something smell like toasted frog? Supposedly, a frog dropped in boiling water will do its best to escape, while...

What in the heck is a wombat? That's the question that a lot of very jealous people are sure to ask after learning about a man who left a considerable fortune to the Wombat Awareness Organization. Australian news outlets have gone wild about the story of an American man who left $8 million to the "non profit organisation specialising in large scale rescue and rehabilitation of the Southern Hairy Nosed Wombat." The donation will come in $1-million-per-year increments, starting next year. His family has asked, perhaps not too surprisingly, for anonymity.

A multi-million-dollar bequest from an American benefactor has shocked a volunteer wombat rescue program in South Australia. The man visited Mannum in South Australia to see the work two years ago and has now given $8 million to the Wombat Awareness Organisation. Founding director Brigitte Stevens has been astounded by the donation and plans to put the money towards buying land to develop a centre to care for wombats. "There's nothing like that in South Australia and you know that'd be a big step forward for conservation in South Australia where we can then work on co-existence with other species...

A man who survived last year's deadly bush fires in Australia is recovering in hospital after falling victim to a rare attack by a wombat. Bruce Kringle, 60, was pulled to the ground by the animal and bitten on the legs and arms after apparently stepping on it by mistake. He escaped after killing the wombat with an axe. Animal experts said it appeared the wombat had been suffering from mange, which had made it irritable. Paramedic Robert Gill said it appeared Mr Kringle had trodden on the animal when he left his caravan in Flowerdale, north-east of Melbourne. He...

An Australian man has reportedly killed a wombat with an axe after the animal attacked him and pulled him to the ground in a 20-minute ordeal. The 60-year-old victim had stepped on the creature which then became "rather nasty" and bit the man's lower legs and arms. He was brought down by the wombat and also suffered injuries to his chest after finding it outside his caravan door. The man tried to get away from the creature but it "kept coming at him", said a paramedic. Eventually he managed to grab an axe and kill the animal, it is claimed.

A man is recovering in hospital after he was mauled by a wombat at Flowerdale, north-east of Melbourne. Paramedic Robert Gill said the man was a survivor of the Black Saturday bushfires and was living in a caravan while he built a new home. He said the when the man went to leave the caravan this morning, he found the wombat on his door mat. "Unfortunately the gentleman stood on the wombat and the wombat proceeded to get rather nasty and attacked him and inflicted some wounds to his lower legs and also to his arms as well," he said....

She may only have a tiny heart - but luckily for Karmann the orphaned wombat, she was rescued by an animal lover with a large one. The helpless little creature owes her life to a driver who rescued her from the pouch of her dying mother, who had been run over in East Gippsland, Australia in early March.

Wombat droppings are helping an industrial city in Australia fight the effects of the global financial crisis. Burnie, in the north-west of the state of Tasmania, has been hit by repeated rounds of job cuts. But despite the gloom, one local industry is thriving by producing handmade paper out of a material no-one else wants - wombat poo. The novelty paper is a hit with tourists keen to buy a distinctly Australian souvenir from the area. The wombat, a furry marsupial, lives in the wild only in Australia.

SYDNEY — A New Zealand man has been sentenced to community service after telling police he was raped by a wombat and the experience had made him speak "Australian".[snip]Cradock pleaded guilty in the local court to using a phone for a fictitious purpose. He was sentenced to 75 hours' community work. Police prosecutor Sergeant Chris Stringer told the court alcohol played a large role in Cradock's life.

SYDNEY (AFP) - Scientists in Australia announced Friday they had found the jawbone of a giant wombat the size of a large car that lived 20,000-40,000 years ago. The jawbone of the ancient marsupial, part of the "mega-fauna" that once roamed pre-historic Australia, was found by a tour guide at the Jenolan Caves in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. The animal, named the diprotodon, was two metres (6.5 feet) tall and three metres (10 feet) long, weighing about three tonnes. By comparison, modern wombats are about one metre (three feet) long, 25 centimetres (10 inches) high and weigh 20-45...

US pop superstar Janet Jackson hopes Hillary Clinton will become the first woman president of the United States. "Hillary Clinton as president -- that would be great," Jackson said in an interview with German press agency DPA Monday. "Then she could show all those people who wouldn't trust a woman with such a job."

I died because I'm poor. I'm floating in the water. My Mom is accross from me. Mosquitos swarm around us. They're our only friends. I'm in the United States. Of, America. Not Vietnam. I'm not on T.V. It's really me. I'm dying 'cause I'm poor. Mama's eyes are fluttering. Like a butterfly. This is real. Please, people. Not a photo op. I'm dying 'cause I'm poor. I spit on Mama's lips, to give her moisture. Her face turns cold. I'm crying 'cause I'm poor. Oh, Mama! Dear sweet Mama. I wail into the sky. Where's that promising Bush? Mama didn't...

In this war freedom should come first not after! In New Hampshire the Motto is Live free or Die! I don't need Bush spying on law abiding americans and taking our freedoms. Anyone who surrenders a square inch of freedom to the government in the name of saftey is a traitor and should be treated like one! Let the Bush Fashists all drop dead! Filthy Commys! LET FREEDOM RING!